With 1,898 staff strength, the refineries’ workers represent about 28.7 per cent of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation group’s total workforce domiciled at the Kaduna, Port Harcourt, and Warri refineries.
Some experts have said that keeping most of the workers employed for doing nothing does not contribute anything significant to the economy and to their professional development.According to them, it is a waste of scarce resources and unsustainable at a time government is in dire need of money to fund its budget.
The NNPC also incurred a loss of N473.3 billion in operating the refineries between January 2015 and February 2021 operating the three refineries, as claimed in a report by SBM Intelligence, a geopolitical and socioeconomic research firm.The report, titled ‘Nigeria’s moribund refineries, said Nigeria’s refineries had become a costly pastime, adding that they have been unproductive since July 2019 despite the huge costs of maintaining them.
He, however, said most of the workers have been moved to other Service Business Units that are functioning very well, adding that when the refineries come back on stream, they will bring back all the workers from their various SBUs to run the refineries.Similarly, the union’s secretary-general, Lumumba Okugbawa, also noted that the refineries’ workers, who are highly skilled, should not be made sacrificial lamb as they have put in their best to ensure the refineries work.
Public Affairs Analyst, Jide Ojo, said sacking the workers would compound the unemployment rate in the country. He said the way forward was for the government to redeploy them to other areas, parastatals, or the parent ministry of petroleum resources.He also suggested that government could retrench them and pay them their severance benefits immediately so that they can venture into entrepreneurship.
What a waste , of money , human resource , knowledge and whatever you can think of , This Nigeria a wasteful Nation !!
whos fault ?
Don't we have the resources to pay every Nigerian to seat at home